


Where Bluebirds Fly

by willowbilly



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Dorks in Love, Drunken Confessions, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Fluff and Humor, Getting Together, Hangover, Implied/Referenced Irresponsible Drinking, Implied/Referenced Karaoke, Light Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, Pining, Requited Love, or at least it doesn't by the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 10:25:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15532206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowbilly/pseuds/willowbilly
Summary: After a wild night out, McCoy wakes up in Spock's bed, bundled in like a child, with no memory of how he got there. He may not have his dignity, but at least Spock still seems oblivious to the fact that McCoy has been desperately and silently pining after him for years. Probably.





	Where Bluebirds Fly

**Author's Note:**

> So here it is! The one-shot Spones fic I wrote in three days to replace the other Spones fic which I _had_ been writing for [Spiced Peaches LII](https://spiced-peaches.livejournal.com/85792.html) bc _that_ one was getting too long for me to finish in time and I absolutely couldn't trust myself to have it finished by the next issue as per the submission guidelines, either. Ta-da!
> 
> Takes place sometime during the five-year mission and ignores any traumatic consequences of eps such as _Mirror Mirror_ and the like for the sake of Good Feels and Soft Romance. Title comes from me listening to [Israel "IZ" Kamakawiwo'ole's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1bFr2SWP1I) rendition of _Somewhere Over the Rainbow_ over and over on a loop while writing this, and I picked McCoy's karaoke song because I saw [this fanvid](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN0CF4Ojfi8) by pantswarrior and it struck me as an especially apt choice for the pairing, like, _wow_ does it ever work well, y'know?
> 
> Also A WARNING for some very mild swearing and descriptions of gross hangover symptoms which I decided weren't enough to bump the rating up to T, but hey. They still exist, so! Watch out!
> 
> Anyways, please enjoy! :)

 McCoy groans, long and feeble and pathetic, as he enters a world of excruciating agony.

“Ah, Dr. McCoy. You are finally awake.”

McCoy burrows his face deeper into the pillow as his head throbs out in vicious protest of Spock's perfectly reasonable speaking volume. Everything hurts, sure, but his _brain._ God, his brain is _pulsing_ within the cruel confines of his shrunken skull, his frontal lobe trying to split open his left orbital ridge. Something tastes like it died in his mouth and then rotted into mold which then merged into one with his tongue, everything stale and sour and disconcertingly fuzzy. His memory's fuzzy, too, come to think of it. He really must've overdone it but good last night.

“Wha' happened?” he mumbles, his slack mouth slurring the words into the pillow. The fabric of the pillowcase seems softer than usual, and the pillow itself more firm. Something about it smells very nice. Sort of musky-sweet and cinnamon-y.

“You do not remember?” Spock asks, with polite, suspiciously nonjudgmental equanimity which instantly puts McCoy on wary alert. Or as alert as he can get his exhausted self to be.

He rolls his face out of the pillow and squints blearily at his surroundings, following the sound of Spock's voice, and freezes in mortification.

No wonder Spock is here. This is _Spock's room._ McCoy was sleeping off his hangover in _Spock's bed._

What in the blue blazes?

McCoy takes in the maroon wall hangings, the ruddy lights, the unlit meditation candles, the occasional tasteful stone sculpture. The glass of water and the pain relief hypo set out for him on the nightstand. Takes in Spock in his silky black off-duty Vulcan robes, sitting at the chair in front of his vanity, angled around to face McCoy, one eyebrow raised.

McCoy feels his head wobble on his neck and he lets himself collapse, pressing his burning face back into the forgiving, smothering, pleasantly Spock-scented darkness of the pillow. _“End me,”_ he says to himself, in a cracked, horrified whisper. There is drool smeared across his cheek. Spock looks perfect and composed and as devastatingly attractive as ever and he's just seen McCoy with drool on his cheek and a blush hot enough to fry an egg on and, God. His eyes are probably bloodshot to hell and back and his hair is made entirely of cowlicks.

He's not a vain man. He doesn't have the looks to be vain. But he _does_ have the barest veneer of decency and professionalism to maintain, damn it. Especially when he's in front of the particularly infuriating person for whom he's been carrying such a persistently long-term torch. A _massive_ torch alight with flames so hot that he can't seem to help but singe himself and Spock both. Like he just can't help but cause them both pain, over and over again, Hippocratic oath or no.

He really is wretched.

“What was that?” Spock asks.

“Nothing,” McCoy snaps, and then says again, “What _happened,_ Spock?” He almost adds, too revealingly, _How badly did I mess this up?_ But his higher reasoning thankfully intercedes and slams his mouth shut for him before he can blurt it out.

Spock deals with his ill manners and his jibes often enough, and with far more grace than is warranted, for McCoy to also saddle him with knowledge of McCoy's ridiculous schoolyard-style crush.

“I accompanied you and the rest of the bridge crew to a recreational establishment on Rigel 2 for shore leave, over which we are currently docked,” says Spock. “I remained sober throughout the night, but you and Captain Kirk each imbibed an impressive number of alcoholic beverages. You emphasized several times, in what I believe to have been a joking manner, that you were merely fulfilling your own orders as a physician. The night's activities culminated in a traditional performance of Earth karaoke which somehow devolved into a bar fight in defense of the _Enterprise's_ honor. Lieutenant Uhura was objectively the most talented singer, and you were by far the worst. Mr. Scott is likely to blame for the altercation but there were only superficial bruises and bruised egos on all sides.”

“What else?” McCoy moans in dread, because none of that explains how he got _here,_ into Spock's _bed._

“You chose to perform the early 21st century pop song _Please Don't Leave Me,_ by the artist P!nk,” says Spock. “That is 'P!nk' spelled with an exclamation mark in place of the letter 'i.' You sustained prolonged eye contact with me throughout your rendition and appeared on the verge of tears on multiple occasions before you were, by turn of phrase, 'booed off the stage.'”

“Oh God,” McCoy chokes out. He sends out a prayer for the mattress beneath him to simply open up and swallow him whole.

“After Mr. Scott caused us to be forcibly expelled from the establishment, we returned to the ship. You were inebriated to the point that your speech and motor functions were extremely impaired, but you nonetheless managed to insist on accompanying me to my quarters for a 'nightcap.' Jim seemed quite eager to support this venture, declaring himself our 'wingman' and pushing you bodily in my direction. I acquiesced and escorted you here so that I could oversee your safety.”

Bits and pieces are now coming back to him. He remembers Jim, clumsy and overenthusiastic with drink, shoving him from behind and sending him stumbling into Spock's arms. Spock had caught him to keep him from sprawling to the ground face-first like the galaxy's gawkiest sack of potatoes and had half-carried him all the way through the halls. He'd practically been hanging off Spock's neck.

He's pretty sure that Spock had resorted to scooping him up in a bridal carry for the final stretch or so.

Gossip surrounding the spectacle has probably circulated through the entire ship twice over already. Chapel is going to be insufferably bubbly and smug until McCoy breaks the news that, no, he and Spock _still_ have not become a couple, please mind your own darn beeswax, Nurse. And then she's going to sulk and make pointed remarks about how he really needs to get his crap together and make his move if he ever wants to find love the same way that _she_ had when she finally screwed up her courage and asked out Uhura. And _then_ she's going to pull out the criminally adorable honeymoon pictures. _Again._

The ultimate point being that even if Spock is too damn oblivious to put two and two together after McCoy publicly butchered a love song while staring him straight in the eyes, McCoy's life for the next couple of weeks or so is shaping up to be a protracted session of psychological _torment._

McCoy indulges in one more long, pitiful, beached-whale groan, muffling it in Spock's pillow, and then finally levers himself upright. The checked red-and-bronze blanket slides off him and poses less of an obstacle than the second pillow which had been propped behind his back to keep him on his side while he slept, and he flounders a little even before the change in altitude kicks his dizziness and nausea into high gear. He swings his socked feet to the deck— he's not surprised to find that Spock has left him completely clothed but for his boots, which have been set neatly side by side nearby; he's sweated right through both of his uniform shirts and he _reeks,_ why, God, why— and drops his head between his knees until the worst of it recedes and he's not about to hurl.

“Anything else?” he asks, with great reluctance but equally great resignation, and peers up from beneath his eyebrows to catch sight of Spock's face as he observes him.

Spock takes long enough to answer that McCoy realizes he's hesitating, and McCoy's whole, crumpled, aching, scrawny body is suddenly electrified by a lightning bolt of pure fear. He's abruptly certain that Spock is about to say that McCoy came onto him. That McCoy tried to kiss him, or _groped_ him, or otherwise acted like a total, obnoxious creep. That McCoy finally did something which truly disgusted him.

McCoy wouldn't have thought it of himself, and if the embarrassment from before was enough to kill him, the shame now is potent enough to scorch his sorry remains to cinders. He would _never_ have gotten so trashed if he'd had even the slightest inkling that he'd behave inappropriately. That he'd—

Good God, what the _hell_ did he do?

“Nothing,” says Spock.

McCoy lets out the breath he's been holding in a wheezy exhale of relief and clutches as surreptitiously as he can at his heart. He grabs the glass of water from the nightstand and tries to chuckle to hide his reaction, but it's shaky. “Nothing?” he presses, just to make absolutely sure.

Spock is watching him with his smooth deadpan firmly in place. For a moment McCoy thinks there's a shift in his eyes, something yearning and sorrowful, but he must've imagined it. “Nothing, Doctor,” he repeats. “You were incoherent, and helpless, and I put you to bed.”

“Didn't need you to tuck me in, Spock. I'm not a child.”

“I am _well_ aware,” Spock says dryly, his tone clearly implying that, yes, he is _quite_ acquainted with the fact that McCoy is a crotchety old man.

McCoy sips at the water and it's such a glorious, refreshing rush that he downs the entire thing in a few overly hasty gulps, rivulets of water escaping from the corners of his mouth to dribble down his chin. His mouth feels marginally less moldy and the hydration is already helping his headache some. He sets the glass back down, his fingers and thumb leaving behind five smudges of grease on the octagonal facets of transparent aluminum.

He belatedly dries his chin with his sleeve, and then wipes his hands off on his pants. Digs his nails through the coarse cloth and into the meatiest, most muscled sections of his thighs to center himself.

He could take the hypo, as well. Banish the headache and the queasiness and all the other terrible hangover symptoms in one fell swoop. But he really did bring his suffering on himself. It's better if he toughs it out so that he learns his lesson this time, rather than going easy on himself and making the same mistake in the future.

It'd be different if it were one of his patients in pain, but he's his own damn doctor, thank you very much, and he's handling himself fine.

“Could I trouble you for the use of your shower?” he asks Spock.

“Of course,” says Spock, probably as eager as McCoy is for him to scrub off some of his stink. “I also took the liberty of retrieving a fresh change of clothes for you from your quarters. You'll find them waiting for you on the bathroom counter.”

McCoy raises both of his eyebrows at Spock at this, but Spock just lifts that single supercilious brow of his own in return, as if it's silly to question why Spock would have used the permission pass which McCoy's granted him to go into McCoy's quarters and fetch something for him while he's snoozing off a bender in Spock's own bed. It's just weirdly considerate of him, is all. Seeing as McCoy could've just walked back to his own quarters and changed clothes afterwards, or simply showered there from the get-go.

“Well, thank you,” McCoy says, snatching his boots, standing up in a decisive lurch, and proceeding precariously to the bathroom, his head pounding and his balance teetering all the way. “I really appreciate it. Give me two shakes of a lamb's tail and I'll be out of your hair.”

He relieves himself, splashes his face with water, and rinses out his mouth, scraping the plaque off his teeth with a fingernail as best he can. Doesn't go so far as to filch Spock's toothbrush even if he does pop one of his mouthwash tabs.

The sonic shower blasts some semblance of functionality into him and he emerges feeling far more like an actual living person than when he went in. The fresh, folded uniform is stacked right where Spock said it'd be, and after pulling the snug black undershirt on over his head he wets his hands in the sink again and runs his fingers through his hair to comb it and flatten it down; the eerie dryness of sonic showers always somehow leaves it charged with static electricity. He doesn't bother with the baby-blue overshirt of his uniform. Just drapes it over his arm to hang at the crook of his elbow as he leaves the bathroom.

Spock's still sitting at an angle at his vanity, his elegant hands steepled in front of his chest, the arch of mellow light set around the mirror beaming like a halo behind him, picking out the curved, pointy tip of one ear past the utilitarian hunter's sleekness of the bowl cut which would be incomprehensibly dorky on anyone else. McCoy wonders if Spock's even budged. He was pretty sure he'd puttered around long enough for Spock to have finished with his makeup and whatever else he was doing over there by now.

“Thanks again, Spock,” says McCoy, awkwardly. He makes an aborted gesture, jerking his thumb towards the front door, and starts to say something inane. _Guess I'll go now._ Or maybe _See you._

Or, most likely, _Sorry._

“Bones,” Spock says, cutting him short. He rises to his feet, deliberate and dignified, the flowing excess of his robes falling slim about him with a sibilant hiss and swaying around the lean solidity of his body as he steps forward. His hands part, and one lifts, haltingly, towards McCoy's face. Hovering outstretched between them. “Your makeup. May I apply it for you?”

The room is very warm and very quiet but for the omnipresent hum of the ship's engines and the slow, muted strumming of a musical recording drifting from the speakers of Spock's computer console. Some Vulcan string instrument, playing a lazily introspective series of low and yet lower notes.

Spock's long fingers curl inward with the slightest of trembles, about to retract and take with it the offer, but McCoy catches Spock's wrist before the moment can fully pass him by. He swallows down the lump in his throat, his mouth all dried out all over again, and croaks out, “Sure, Spock.”

Spock's steady, somber eyes are a clear, dark sort of coffee brown, offset handsomely by the powdery shimmer of his butterfly blue-gray eye shadow and the captivating alien tinge to his complexion. He must use lipstick, too. There's no other reason for his lips to be such a gentle shade of pink, McCoy thinks, as he watches Spock's sculpted mouth pull into the faintest of smiles.

He uses McCoy's grip on his wrist to turn them around and direct a pliant McCoy into the chair. McCoy only remembers himself and lets go after Spock has pushed him down and is reaching past him for the cosmetics wand on the vanity. He drops Spock's wrist abruptly and grabs for his own knee, kneading in against his kneecap and squeezing his eyes shut in the hopes that he'll look less panicked that way. The seam of pain zigzagging up his skull sharpens, his stomach jolting with nerves and his bile rising dangerously in response, and he regrets not taking the hypo. Hell, he regrets not leaving Spock's quarters right off when he had the chance.

He startles when Spock touches his chin with his fingertips, bracing him, but he's too afraid to open his eyes and see Spock right there in front of him, that enigmatic smile of his close enough to kiss. He'll say something if he does. Something too true.

“If you are uncomfortable, Doctor, you need only say so,” says Spock. “It is unnecessary to humor me.” The rumble of his voice puts him slightly above McCoy, his collarbones perhaps level with McCoy's brow.

McCoy has a sudden, vivid sense memory of his face burrowed against the firm planes of Spock's chest, of Spock's arms around him, rocking him in time with his walking. He breathes in a deep lungful of Spock's calming, heavy, spicy scent, feels Spock's robes slipping around him like mantled wings, and despite himself he finds himself relaxing. Finds himself feeling so very, astonishingly safe.

“Just get on with it already, Spock,” he grumbles.

A light puff of air brushes his forehead, as if Spock had huffed out a silent snort of amusement, and the click of the cosmetics wand being switched on sounds nearby. “I believe that your usual shade of eye shadow is not exceedingly dissimilar to my own. A more subtle application of the same should be sufficient.”

Spock smooths out the arches of McCoy's eyebrows with the pad of his thumb, the hairs rearranging with a reedy scrape, before he sets the tingling brush of the wand against McCoy's eyelid, sweeping the makeup onto the soft, delicate skin with careful, confident strokes, his other hand still holding McCoy's chin with implacable tenderness. McCoy lifts his brows slightly, and lets his expression go otherwise lax and neutral, and sinks into the beat of his own shriveled heart as it breaks to shards and then to splinters and then to powder within his breast. Beating in time with the Vulcan lyre thrumming from the computer speakers.

He only realizes that Spock can probably hear the longing pulse of it when Spock moves the wand to McCoy's other side and speaks again.

“I am afraid that I was not entirely forthcoming with you, before, Doctor.”

McCoy resists the reflex to blink his eyes open. Spock's still holding him still, after all, and he'll probably get the wand jabbed straight into his eyeball for his trouble. “Oh?”

“You said something to me before you fell into unconsciousness. You confessed that you harbored longtime romantic feelings for me.”

McCoy stops breathing.

Because he's so utterly frozen, and so instantly and hideously attuned to Spock's every noise and movement, he senses Spock falter, his cool fingers pressing just a bit more tightly against McCoy's jaw and his efficient, painterly strokes of the wand wavering for the merest of moments. His tone, however, retains its usual clinical detachment. “I told you that your sentiments were reciprocated, but it appears that you woke up without any memory of the exchange.”

“Spock,” McCoy murmurs hoarsely, confused and wrecked and ruined and not yet daring to believe a word of it, but Spock slides his thumb upward and over McCoy's lips, effectively hushing him.

“I have not yet applied your eyeliner. Please refrain from fidgeting, if such a feat is at all possible for you.” The cosmetics wand clicks again as Spock switches its settings, and it returns with a simulated felt tip which Spock runs, freehand, along the very edge of McCoy's upper eyelid with as much precision as McCoy himself aspires towards with his laser scalpel. “You seemed quite distraught while making your confession last night, and this morning I was given the distinct impression that you would not have disclosed your feelings had you been in complete possession of your faculties. It was nevertheless duplicitous of me to keep such information from you, and I apologize for withholding it, even for so brief a period. I only hope that my actions do not cause you to think less of me.” He finishes drawing McCoy's habitual paper-thin winged eyeliner onto McCoy's other eyelid, and then he withdraws, the cosmetics wand tapping against the counter of the vanity as he reaches past McCoy's shoulder to set it down.

McCoy's eyes fly open and he grabs Spock's wrist again, pressing Spock's hand to his face before Spock can pull _that_ touch of his away, as well. Spock's hand slides open against McCoy's cheek as if he has cradled his face a thousand times before, fitting to him with sublime, reverent familiarity, and for once McCoy does not flinch back in apprehension of a mindmeld and all it would reveal. Not now that he's apparently already admitted his most fiercely and poorly kept secret to Spock himself right before passing out into a drunken stupor in Spock's bed, while Spock... what? Said _I love you, too_ to McCoy's snoring form and then proceeded to sleep on the floor? Some gentleman McCoy is.

“You... reciprocate my feelings? You feel the same?” McCoy asks. Because he still can't quite believe he could be so fortunate, so blessed. Because he has to be _sure._

Spock's throat bobs as he swallows, but his gaze is resolute, his eyes fixed on McCoy's with intimate intensity. “I am in love with you,” Spock says, and this time his voice cracks, a bit, at the last, and McCoy realizes that he is as scared and as gone on McCoy as McCoy is on Spock.

“You bastard,” McCoy says, his vision going shimmery with unshed tears of joy. “You're going to make me cry and muck up all the work you just did.”

“I can redo it,” says Spock, and then he leans forward and presses his lips to McCoy's in a light peck of a kiss, going slow, as if expecting McCoy to second-guess himself and jerk away at any moment.

McCoy melts at the chaste, tremulous contact, at the slight cling of Spock's matte pink lipstick, at the way he's sure that some of the color has been left to mark him even when Spock retreats. His tears overflow, and Spock smiles again, that faint, private smile of affection, and he wipes away McCoy's tears with his thumbs as McCoy's whole face splits into a rapturous grin.

He reaches up to the nape of Spock's neck and tugs him down until their foreheads are pressed together, smiling and smiling and smiling, and he says, “I'm in love with you, too. I've loved you for so long, and I'm in love with you, too.”

“Would you care to accompany me to breakfast, Doctor?”

“You asking me out on a date already, Spock?”

“Yes.”

“It would be my pleasure, Spock. It'd be my absolute pleasure."

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Rebloggable post [here!](http://willowbilly.tumblr.com/post/176539114471/where-bluebirds-fly-willowbilly-star-trek-the)


End file.
